The Envelope Please!

It's been a long time coming, but we managed to finish off our first of 35 envelopes this week. We decided to sell our dust-collecting Wii on craigslist and got $150 out of it.

On the inside of the envelope the card read,

"$1,000 paid off $34,000 to go! We have a long road ahead of us but I know we'll make it!! ROADTRIP- QuikTrip drinks to celebrate the first of many steps!"

We always get a quiktrip drink on our way out of town to visit family or go on a long trip, so it is fitting for us to start this long journey with a QT drink! The neat part about paying off this past $1,000 is that it marks $25,000 of debt gone since we started this 3 years ago. I have a feeling if we wouldn't have put it toward debt, we would have nothing to show for it now. So glad we chose the road less taken, it feels so good!

Envelope #2 has $891.49 left to pay off. Good news though...our tax refund is pending in our checking account right as we speak. After a friendly car repair, we have a big chunk going to debt. I have a feeling envelope #2 isn't going to get settled in on our fridge!! YES!

In 1 Month...

It's been a month since we had to buy Chris a new car. Since then we have been putting all our extra money to build our $1,000 emergency savings back up. In the last month we only made the minimum payment to each of our 3 student loans. As of yesterday, we now have a fully funded emergency fund (yay!!) and we are ready to start paying off debt again. We call this snowballing.

Dave Ramsey's strategy for efficient debt pay-off is to put your debts in order from the smallest amount owed to the largest amount owed. Start working on the smallest one first, making only minimum payments to the rest. As soon as the smallest debt is paid off take all of that money and put it toward debt number 2. It's a snowball effect. When we started paying off debt we didn't have much of a snowball because all of our money was spread out over several debts. Now that we are only down to 3 debts our snowball is huge compared to what we used to snowball!!

The encouragement in the beginning was to be able to pay off small debts quickly and be done with them. Now since we are at our largest debts, they don't go away as quickly, but we see this huge chunk of money that someday will be ours to choose where it goes! We could literally send someone from our church to the Philippines every 2 months with our snowball right now. We can chose to do that someday when our money is ours again!

Oh and that $1,000 envelope hanging on our fridge- it only needs $50.79 to open it. Read about our envelope motivation system to finish our last $35,000 of debt in one of my older posts.

All in one Accord!

Since my husband's older car died (RIP) over a week ago we had to do a little adjusting to our normal life and financial routine and buy a different car. We decided on an amount and we weren't going to spend a dollar more. We looked at so many cars, I didn't think we were going to find the one! I realized that this is why people don't by cheap cars...it's hard to find a good one. We had to put in a lot of time and effort to finally arrive at the car we ended up buying. We found an ad on craigslist for a '97 Honda Accord and were really impressed with it's condition and it was mechanically sound. We offered $500 under his asking price and he tried to get more from us, but the beauty of not bringing any more money than what we wanted to spend was that we REALLY couldn't spend anymore! The guy took it and we were set!

We are now putting all our extra cash back into our emergency savings account to build it up to $1000 again. This is the first time in 3 years that we've had to completely drain our emergency savings. We used to have a credit card "for emergencies", but we found ourselves using it for wants most of the time. When we decided to stop using credit cards and put $1000 in the bank it was like walking on a tightrope without a net. I was really afraid something major was going to happen and we were going to wish we still had a credit card. But as things came up (and they did) we used our savings or we had excess in our budget to cover it. Part of the adjustment was that we had to define what a true emergency was. With our credit card, when we were out of money and I was hungry and didn't want to cook- eating out was an emergency! When our favorite band came to town when we were living paycheck to paycheck with no excess- our credit card funded that emergency! Now, we actually have the money but we don't choose to spend it on those things very often.

Bump in the Road

We just started our big debt-free push on January 1st. It only took 17 days for our first major kink in the plan to happen! That has to be a record! Yesterday at 7:25am Chris called me and told me his car broke down on the side of the road on his way to work. Ethan and I jumped in the car to go get him, fortunately it was a day off of work for me. After towing the car, looking into the problem, and the huge expense to fix it (which was our first choice), we had to say our goodbyes and are now looking for another cheap car to replace it.

Dave's baby step 1 is to have $1000 in savings for emergencies. We just made a $400 online payment to our smallest student loan, it was still pending and we decided to pull that money from the land of pending and put it in our savings account. I get paid in a few days and we can scrape up another $600. It actually worked.!!We aren't financing the car, we are really excited to buy a car that we came up with the money in less than a week. Our biggest inconvenience is having both of us work and getting Ethan to daycare with one car the rest of this week.

Our plan now...buy a car and the money we don't use on the car we will put back into savings. Our extra money, intended for debt, will build our savings back to $1000 for any other emergencies that might appear in the next 17 days. When our savings account is funded we get back on the debt-free train! Choo-Choo!

We are praising God for providing. We are thankful that we didn't have to go into crisis-mode, we just made some adjustments and made it work.

Envelope 1: Still have $492 left to pay before we can open it! We'll get there...tortoise style!

Going on a financial diet!

We are getting very close to opening our first envelope on our final debt-free push. So far this year we have paid $918. Yes!!! In order to get this huge snowball rolling, our finances had to go on a diet! We have correlated our financial journey to a diet so many times it is really starting to click now! We are financially overweight, in order to dig out of this hole, we have to cut our spending (calories) and create good habits (exercise). It takes discipline- everyday! A quote that keeps coming around to us is "Do the next right thing!" That sounds so much easier to do the next right thing than to look at our 35 envelopes and become discouraged.

This past year my husband, Chris, was the master of discipline in his eating habits. In 2011, he lost 90 pounds and since we've been married he's cut 110 pounds. People come up to him and ask him how he did it and he's most frustrated that he doesn't really know what to tell them! He didn't do anything unreal like a fad diet, or find a magic weight-loss food, he didn't exercise hours on end- he just cut calories and kept track of them everyday. If he missed his calories one day, he just picked back up the next day. It might change the way you look at a budget when you think about it related to counting calories. We aren't doing any get rich quick scheme to pay off our debt, we are just doing the next right thing...as boring as that sounds! :)

Chris just started his own weight loss blog- http://chrisbrownweightloss.blogspot.com. So proud of him!

June 2007- The day we got engaged- on top of the Empire State Building! 

November 2011 - Four years of marriage and 110 pounds lighter!

2012 Here We Come...$1,000 at a time!

It's not that nothing exciting has happened in the last 6 months, I've just been too busy enjoying it I forgot to share! We love posting about all Ethan can do, but for the next few months we need  to be motivated to kick our last 3 student loans out of our lives! I was inspired to make an envelope for every $1,000 we are still in debt this week. In each envelope is a note card with an encouraging word, fun activity, or scripture verse. Some of the activities are absolutely free others will cost a little money to do. I figure it will motivate us all the more to keep going. By the time we open some of the envelopes I will probably forget what I wrote, so it's a surprise for me too! We have been paying off debt faithfully for 3 years now and I would love to be completely debt free in 2 more years. Enter the Tortoise and the Hare!! We are so proud to be the tortoise!
In January 2009, we took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University Class and we woke up to the situation we were in and found the tools to do something about it in our 2nd year of marriage. Many of the couples in the class with us were older and change was going to be a huge challenge for them. We weren't set in any financial ways yet. So glad we are now Dave Ramsey poster children and can testify to Biblical finance everyday of the week!

In January 2009, we were in debt $56,000. We thankfully didn't own a house to add to that amount. In the last 3 years we have paid off $24,000. Mathematically, we should only owe $32,000 now right? Nope, interest loves our company so we have $35,000 at least to pay off. We're hoping to change our relationship with interest someday to make it work with us, not against us! Whew- there is a lot of shame with debt, it's hard to share the amount without feeling like I need to justify it. I am not proud of it, that's why it has to go!

Here is where we keep all of the envelopes $2,000-$35,000

We've had this cute little locked box for a few years and we always tell people that it's where we keep Chris' gallbladder, now we have a better story! :)

Here's the first envelope. If you can't see, we have already made a $508.66 payment and we are already halfway to opening it. Are you excited to see what is inside??? So are we! :)

Here's the rest of the gang...coming to a fridge near us! Can't wait to see how many of those get opened this year!

Can't leave this post without showing off Ethan! He got a drum set for Christmas and is in love with it.

Christmas Day at Church with the Walters. Yes, Ethan is very happy to be in the picture!

10 months and walking!!

We've had a fun and busy month. From swimming at the pool to petting goats Ethan has had so much fun! He has changed so much too. One of his new favorite past times is to play hide and seek. He will stand at the couch and put his face down and then pop back up to scare us. He just cracks up at how we react.
Ethan took his first steps just a few days ago. He has a very determined personality and I knew it would happen soon...just not that soon!

Swimming with Daddy

i LOVE swimming!!

Petting baby goats at the Deanna Rose Farm

Chillin' outside

Watched Ethan's friend, Lily, one morning...he didn't want to share his mommy!

Happy 4th of July!!

Chris' birthday with the Walters

Waiting in line for The Civil Wars concert...we were prepared!!

July 4th Small Group BBQ- the guys are getting the burgers ready